The present invention relates to security devices for connecting various carriages to each other. More particularly the invention relates to a security arrangement for orderly positioned shopping carts which should be returned by customers to a cart-collecting station.
Security arrangements of the type under consideration may be required at drugstores, supermarkets, or farmer markets where customers normally leave the used and no more needed carts at car parking areas. The problem is that shoppers do not return used shopping carts either to the entrance of the store or to a special borrow area. The carts left near parked cars in the parking areas become obstacles for the moving cars. These randomly left shopping carts can be idle for a relatively long period of time; this is undesirable since due to growing needs the number of shopping carts prepared for use at the entrance of the store is not sufficient.
In order to avoid unnecessary work and to minimize personal costs available carts are normally placed near the entrance of the store in a so-called borrow area and positioned in series or rows in an insertable-one-into-another position, and then are firmly connected to each other.
It has been suggested that in order to separate the last cart from the row of merchandise carts a customer should drop a coin into a coin evaluator or extractor positioned on the body of the cart whereby the rigid connection between two adjacent carts becomes released and the last cart in a row will be available for use. When a customer brings the cart back to a predetermined place and puts this cart into a position in a row of carts he can get his coin back.
German patent publication No. 2900367 describes a shopping trolley provided with a fastening device and a coin or note operated lock. Insertion of money releases a single shopping trolley from a fastening device. The money is refunded when the trolley is returned to a fastening device. The system comprises fixed coupling elements, and each trolley has a coin or note operated lock which can be locked onto a fastening device in a locking area.
Alternatively each trolley may be locked to the automatic lock of another trolley, provided the other trolley is locked to a fastening device or to a further trolley. When the money is inserted, only the last trolley is released, and the money is refunded when the trolley is returned and locked to a fastening device or to the lock of another fastened trolley.
A storage for stackable trolleys provided with coinfreed mechanisms is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,377,227.
Systems for return of merchandise carts have been also disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,165,189; 3,837,455 and 3,897,863. None of the known systems, however, has suggested means allowing to avoid mess and confusion between the shopping carts of neighboring supermarkets and stores located at the same plaza.